In short, a majority of cardiac patients in the vicinity of GCRMC won't need to travel elsewhere for the proper heart care.

"People will have a lot to gain from this. It will mean less time off work, less time making plans, less use of the helicopter, it's more convenient and it's great for patients who can be closer to their families," said Eric Evans, chief executive officer of Sierra Providence Health Network. "I'm a big believer that the best health care is always local."

Construction will begin soon on what will be called the Center for Interventional Heart Care and a cardiac catheterization lab. The center, which will be located near the chapel on the hospital's north side, will be managed jointly by GCRMC and Sierra Providence. It will also be staffed with cardiac specialists from El Paso, with the ultimate goal of getting those doctors to move to Alamogordo.

"We're going to have the best equipment available, the best physicians available. ... We're going to staff this in a world-class way," Evans said.

Evans said GCRMC and Sierra Providence will be "integrated in a way that is less costly."

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"We will know each other's protocols," he said. "Our doctors will work with the doctors here in Alamogordo so that, in case there is a need to go somewhere else, there won't be a need for (duplicating) tests that have already been done. We're all on the same processes and protocols. It will be much more convenient and efficient for everyone involved."

Evans said Sierra Providence carefully selected GCRMC as a partner.

"We don't just partner with anyone," he said. "You have a great hospital here when it comes to very high quality. This partnership will only expand that."

Evans said adding cardiac care adds a "halo effect" to any hospital.

"There will be a lot of other things that will stay when cardiologists stay," he said.

Jim Heckert, GCRMC's chief executive officer, said the hospital began looking for partnerships several years ago to determine how best to provide access and expand cardiology care in Alamogordo and Otero County. The hospital board hired the Coker Group, a national health care consulting firm based in Atlanta that determined cardiac care was strongly needed in the Tularosa Basin, he said.

With Sierra Providence, Heckert said he was looking for "someone who would invest in the hospital" and "put some skin into the game."

"We want to run things with high quality, really good oversight and with people who have done this before," he said. "Our local physicians told me they want consistency in a partnership."

Heckert said he wasn't interested in forming partnerships with individual physicians.

"We were after a system relationship that would stand the test of time," he said. "After meeting with hospitals in Albuquerque, Las Cruces and El Paso, it was clear there was no other choice but to go with (Sierra Providence) because they were so overwhelmingly positive."

But why partner with an out-of-state health care system?

"Albuquerque is three to four hours away," Heckert said. "Truth is, that's too far away to maintain continuity of care and it's too far to ask people to go. With El Paso, we wanted a system that could grow our clinical integration and provide more favorable health care access for our community."

Evans said Alamogordo heart patients can be confident they will receive top-notch care with the new partnership.

"We have about half the cardiology market share in the city of El Paso," he said. "We have very busy cath labs and have invested in all the latest technology. This includes minimal-invasive heart valve replacement procedures. We perform some cutting-edge procedures and Alamogordo patients will have access to that here."

Heckert said he hopes to have the cardiac center built and operational before the end of the year.